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342 DAEKNESS AND DAWN
The consequences of a fit of epilepsy were disastrous. It
was called the comitial disease, because its occurrence put an
end to the most important business of the commonwealth by
necessitating the dissolution of any public assembly. Consequently,
persons so afflicted were condemned to a life of
misery, and could never move about with freedom. Their
presence in a house was regarded as a misfortune, and they
were sometimes got rid of to save trouble. The pretty face
and winning ways of poor young Syra had saved her, but
since she heard of the supposed cure for her malady her one
desire had been to avail herself of it.
This had made her go frequently to the games of the
amphitheatre, and linger near the gate of Libitina, through
which the confector, who had, when necessary, to give the
finishing stroke, dragged the dead and wounded gladiators
into the spoliarium. She had thus attracted the notice of
the youug slave Phlegon, who held this horrible office.
That he did so was not his own fault. He too was a slave
of Pedanius, who had cruelly degraded him to this place in
the amphitheatre as a punishment for a trivial offence, followed
by an outbreak of resentment, when, in his younger
days, he had been a favourite cup-bearer of his master. It
would be useless to aver that his character had not been
somewhat brutalised by the hideous duties forced upon him ;
but he regarded himself as the victim of necessity, and therefore
as not responsible a view not without a grim element
of truth in the case of a pagan slave. Seeing Syra as she
lingered about the amphitheatre, he had been struck by her
helpless prettiness, and she had learnt to admire a face which
still retained its good looks, if not its good expression. They
fell in love with each other
;
but when she was forced to tell
him of her misfortune, he declared all question of marriage
to be impossible unless she were cured of her comitial disease.
He had himself persuaded her to corne this evening to the
spoliarium after the games, and to try the remedy which
alone seemed to offer any chance of success.
But poor Syra dared not go alone through the darkening,
crowded, and vicious streets, and thought that Junia, as she
was now a freedwoman, could protect her. Junia was always
actuated by the principle as well as by the instinct of kindness.
Not guessing the object of the girl's errand, but